Dorothy the Grader

This is Dorothy the Gallion grader. Old Bert used to driver her and capably at that. It was a small, light grader powered by an International engine the same as a TD9.

Dorothy was named after Gib Green's daughter - mainly just for fun.

Large rocks in the road would cause Bert trouble and he would talk me into operating the rock drill. This was a crowbar with a cold chisel tip on it.

One would hold the drill and the other would hit with a heavy hammer - after each hit, the drill was turned a quarter of a turn. When there was enough rock dust in the hole created, a few drops of water went in and the wet dust, now mud was fished out with a 'spoon' made out of the flattened end of a piece of No.8 wire.
When the hole was big enough, half a plug of Gelignite was stuffed down there and a detonator/safety fuse attached and lit. Boom the rock was no more.

A box of detonators was perhaps 100mm x 100mm and about 60mm high. This one box used to arrive at the Otepopo railway shed in a wagon all by itself. I used to laugh at that.
More than once though when we were forming a road through rock, we would blow up to two cases of explosives and join them with cortex so it would go off with one detonator.
I had a tooth removed which made crimping the safety fuse to the detonator easier. The gap was just the right size!
We used the yellow safety fuse and lit it on a box of matches by paring half of the end away to expose more powder to the flame. Never ran, always walked and whenever Bert was there, he would always light his pipe half way away from the lighted fuse to show how calm he was.